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Rubber Plantations

Tea production in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, is of high importance to the Sri Lankan economy and the world market. The country is the world's fourth largest producer of tea and the industry is one of the country's main sources of foreign exchange and a significant source of income for laborers, with tea accounting for 12% of the GDP, generating roughly $700 million annually. In 1995, Sri Lanka was the world's leading exporter of tea, (rather than producer) with 23% of the total world export, but it has since been surpassed by Kenya. The tea sector employs, directly or indirectly over 1 million people in Sri Lanka, and in 1995 directly employed 215,338 on tea plantations and estates. The humidity, cool temperatures, and rainfall in the country's central highlands provide a climate that favors the production of high quality tea. The industry was introduced to the country in 1847 by James Taylor, the British planter who arrived in 1852.

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LabourDirectly and indirectly, over one million Sri Lankans are employed in the tea industry. A large proportion of the workforce is young women and the minimum working age is twelve. As tea plantations grew in Sri Lanka and demanded extensive labour, finding an abundant workforce was a problem for planters.[8] Sinhalese people were reluctant to work in the plantations. Indian Tamils were brought to Sri Lanka at the beginning of the coffee plantations. Immigration of Indian Tamils steadily increased and by 1855 there were 55,000 new immigrants. By the end of the coffee era there were some 100,000 in Sri Lanka.[8] Young girls typically follow their mothers, grandmothers and older sisters on the plantations, and the women are also expected to perform most of the domestic duties.[19] They live in housing known as "lines", a number of linearly attached houses with just one or two rooms.

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Cultivation and processingOver 188,175 hectares (727 sq mi) or approximately 4% of the country’s land area is covered in tea plantations. The crop is best grown at high altitudes of over 2,100 m (6,890 ft), and the plants require an annual rainfall of more than 100–125 cm (39–49 in). Tea is cultivated in Sri Lanka using the ‘contour planting’ method, where tea bushes are planted in lines in coordination with the contours of the land, usually on slopes. For commercial manufacture the ‘flush’ or leaf growth on the side branches and stems of the bush are used. Generally two leaves and a bud, which have the flavour and aroma, are skilfully plucked, usually by women.[22] Sri Lanka is one of the few countries where each tea leaf is picked by hand rather than by mechanization; if machinery were used, often a considerable number of coarse leaves and twigs could be mixed in, adding bulk but not flavor to the tea.[22] With experience the women acquire the ability to pluck rapidly and set a daily target of around 15 to 20 kg (33 to 44 lb) of tea leaves to be weighed and then transported to the nearby tea factory. Tea plants in Sri Lanka require constant nurturing and attention. An important part of the process is taking care of the soils with the regular application of fertilizer. Younger plants are regularly cut back 10–15 cm (4–6 in) from the ground to encourage lateral growth and are pruned very frequently with a special knife. The tea factories found on most tea estates in Sri Lanka are crucial to the final quality and value of manufactured tea. After plucking, the tea is very quickly taken to the muster sheds to be weighed and monitored under close supervision, and then the teas are brought to the factory.[22] A tea factory in Sri Lanka is typically a multi-storied building and located on tea estates to minimize the costs and time between plucking and tea processing. The tea leaves are taken to the upper floors of the factories where they are spread in troughs, a process known as withering, which removes...

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...Bangladesh launches national tree plantation movement
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Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Tuesday inaugurated a three-month National Tree Plantation Movement-2010 and one-month National Tree Fair-2010 with a call to plant at least three saplings by each individual on all open spaces to protect environment and biodiversity.
"I call upon you all including the people's representatives, government officials and people from all walks of life to plant at least three saplings of fruit-bearing, timber and other medicinal trees and play a pivotal role to involve others with the government's tree plantation movement in this regard," she said.
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...The lives of Slaves on Plantations vs. the lives of Slaves in Big Cities
During the mid 18th century African Americans living in the United States were born, raised, and sold as slaves. Many of them were transported from Africa to the Americas through the middle passage. Arriving in the Americas, African Americans were sold as slaves to slave owners during auctions and were sent out to different homes in order to start their new lives. Many slaves were sent out to large rural plantations in the South and many slaves were sent out to more urban areas like the cities of New Orleans and Baltimore. The lives of slaves on plantations differed greatly from the lives of slaves in the cities. Slaves who lived on plantations worked very long and hard days in the fields doing tasks such as picking tobacco, wheat and other crops. However, slaves who lived in the cities worked in an urban type of environment, usually in households where they cooked and cleaned. Two texts that depict the different living conditions and lives of a slave living on a plantation and city are Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass: An American slave, an autobiography of Fredrick Douglass which explains the life of a slave living in a city. An opposing view presented in Uncle Toms Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe is about the life of a slave named Tom living on a plantation. Living on a plantation...

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Xavier Livermon
AFS 3250
3/06/2013
Origin of the Plantation System
One of the world’s most important events of the seventeenth century was the introduction of the sugar cane to the Caribbean Islands. During the “sugar revolution,” sugar was in high demand and required a greater supply of labor. The importation of African slaves through the transatlantic slave trade provided the labor necessary to keep up with the rigorous demands for sugar products. The transportation of slaves to the New World was a lucrative business, from which the Europeans greatly benefited. The Caribbean Islands produced the greatest portion of supplies from the transatlantic slave trade. The demand for sugar cane was so high by the year 1870 that more than 32000 slaves had been brought to the Caribbean. Because of the harsh conditions and rigorous demands on the plantation many slaves died rapidly.
The origin of the plantation system was as a means to control economic, political, and social power in Caribbean society. With the exception of Haiti, which won its independence in 1804 through revolutionary battles, the independence of the British Caribbean slave’s came some years later. The slaves believed that they would come to enjoy the equal rights, as their white former masters, but the era was instead marked by increasingly adverse changes in racial and social class structure, widening the division between the elite and peasantry. Ethnic...

...Plantation Society and Creole Society
There is a vast range of cultural diversity in the Caribbean today. In this paper, I would be discussing the similarities and differences found between the plantation society model and the Creole society model.
The plantation model was developed in the late 1960’s. According to the book Mustapha (2009), the plantation system played a dominant role in the economic, social, political and cultural life of the Caribbean. George Beckford (1972) saw the plantation system as a total economic institution, where ‘the internal and external dimensions of the plantation system dominate the countries’ economic, social and political structure and their relation with the rest of the world’ (p.102). Within the plantation model, the social structure is reflective of the authoritarian structure which governs economic organization.
Creolization was originated with Edward Kamau Brathwaite. According to Brathwaite in the book Sociology for Caribbean Students, Creolization is defined as a process of change and adaptation that occurs over time. It also goes on to explain that in the Caribbean, the mixture of languages, religious rituals, musical expressions, cuisine and people, represent the Creolization of Caribbean culture and society. Creolization involves acculturation and interculturation. Acculturation as defined in the book as a process in which...

...Since 2011, global natural rubber market has remained oversupplied with surplus amounting to 220,000 tons in 2011, 410,000 tons in 2013 and expected to soar to about 540,000 tons in 2014. Affected by this, global natural rubber prices have been falling. In 2013, natural rubber futures prices in China plummeted by 41.2% over 2011, and is expected to continue to decline.
Browse Full Report With TOC: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis-details/global-and-china-natural-rubber-industry-report-2013-2016
Currently, global natural rubber consumption markets are mainly concentrated in China, Europe, India and the United States, with the four countries and regions making up 59.6% of global natural rubber consumption in 2013. Among them, China was the largest consumer, reaching up to 4.156 million tons, or 34.9% of the world's total.
However, limited by planting region, climate and so on, global natural rubber production is primarily concentrated in Southeast Asia including Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam and African countries. In relative terms, output of natural rubber in China is rather low, only 856,000 tons in 2013, or 7.3% of global total.
Due to grave imbalance between market supply and demand, China imports most of natural rubber from abroad, with import volume totaling 2.4723 million tons in 2013, an increase of 13.6% year on...

...* Rubber and its impacts on local people and environment in Bandarban
La Jhan Aung, 55, who lived in a village called Badurjhiri with his wife and four sons. He was an average Chak. But one event changed his life completely. On March 19, 2013, some group of men forced them out of their home town violently. The robber broke their home and took what little property they had. Not being able to resist they had to seek refuge at a union called Baishary. Now sadly after moving to Baishary, he is now a simple day-labor. He only earns 300 taka per day which is not enough for his family to run.
Another one whose name is Aung Sai Heo (42), he also used to live in Badurjhiri village with his wife and six sons. He cultivated Jhum and Turmeric. But after the big robbery, he had to leave the village as well. He moved to Chak para in Baishary Union. After moving here he faced a lot of problem because he could not find a job. This is the season to cultivate Turmeric. But he cannot cultivate it in proper time. The only reason is safety. If he goes back to the village, he could be killed by the robbers.
There are a lot of people who moved from that village by force like the two people mentioned above. Why are these people forced to move? The answer is people’s desire to cultivate rubber. Rubber cultivation is a farm or large piece of land where rubber plants are grown. It is a highly land-intensive investment so that in...

...This essay seeks to account for the emergence of the plantation system in the Caribbean. Discuss with special reference to the sugar industry. According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary a plantation is a long, artificially-established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption. The term plantation is informal and not precisely defined. Plantations are grown on a large scale as the crops grown are for commercial purpose
Crops grown on plantations include fast-growing tress (often conifers), cotton, coffee, tobacco, sugar cane, sisal, some oil seeds (notably oil palms) and rubber trees. Farms that produce alfalfa, Lespedeza, clover and other forage crops are usually not called plantations. He term “plantation” has usually not included large orchards (except for banana plantations), but does include the planting of trees for lumber. A plantation is always a monoculture over a large area and does not include extensive naturally occurring stands of plants that have economic value. Because of its large size, a plantation takes advantage of economies of scale. Protectionist policies and natural comparative advantage have contributed to determining where plantations have been located.
Among the earliest examples of...

...The basic raw material used in the manufacture of natural rubber latex exam gloves is latex concentrate which is produced from Hevea Brasiliensis natural latex using a steel tapping knife. Tapping is done at early dawn and the latex, collected in cups, is harvested several hours later and preserved with ammonia to stop it from premature coagulation. Because of its high water and non-rubber contents, about 70%, the latex is concentrated and purified by centrifugation to a 60% strength latex concentrate and stabilised using lauric soap for long term storage. The major producers of this latex is Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Before the latex can be used for manufacturing gloves it must be mixed with a recipe of processing chemicals which include sulfur, zinc oxide, accelerators, pigments, stabilisers, dewebbing agent and antioxidant. These are mixed with the latex and allowed to mature over a period of 24-36 hours for the mix to cure. During this period the sulfur will become mixed with the rubber particles to yield a latex compound ready for dipping.
The hand molds (or formers) suspended on a continuous moving chain are first dipped into a slurry of calcium nitrate solution and calcium carbonate. The nitrate is a latex coagulant while the carbonate is a former release agent. After the nitrate and carbonate has partially dried out, the molds are next dipped into the latex compound. At this stage the nitrate immediately...